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Poets, Farmers Break Bread Over Stanzas

It was a long and busy summer at Beetlebung Farm in Chilmark, and on Sunday night farm workers traded vegetable beds for guitars and poems at what was billed as the Beetlebung Festival of the Arts and Edibles at the Chilmark Community Center.

Farm worker, poet and printmaker Emma Young read a series of place based poems she wrote over the course of the year. She paused slightly at the end of each line as though time stood still for each of her words.

The title of her book of poetry is Gazette; it chronicles the changing seasons on the farm and the Vineyard.

“In the back of mind I thought maybe 100 years ago, maybe 50 years ago somebody else made these same poems,” she said.

Farm manger Jason Nichols performed a set of acoustic songs, some of which he wrote during his first Vineyard winter last year, others during summers on Vineyard farms.

“It’s like his voice wasn’t made for talking, only for singing,” one festival attendee said.

Mr. Nichols’s childhood friends Josh Arnoudse and Raky Sastri of the band You Won’t played a rocking set that had little kids and their parents dancing and those not brave enough to hit the dance floor bouncing in their chairs. The guitar, drum set, xylophone and harmonica echoed off the walls of the community center.

It was the first time the group performed on the Vineyard.

“I’ve never performed with so much wood on stage,” Mr. Arnoudse told the crowd with a smile. “It feels so natural, feels so good.”